Parks! America Inc

Good afternoon and welcome to the Parks America Inc. Report's first quarter fiscal year 2024 financial results conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. As you also know, today's event is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the floor over to Joe Dorme, Managing Partner with Blytham Partners. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today to review Parks America's financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2024, ended December 31st, 2023. With us today on the call are Lisa Brady, Chief Executive Officer, and Todd White, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin with prepared remarks, I would like to remind everyone Certain statements made by the management team of Parks America during this conference call constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Except for the statements of historical fact, this conference call may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, some of which are detailed under risk factors in documents filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission including the annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended October 1st, 2023. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date the statements were made. The company can give no assurance that such forward-looking statements will prove to be correct. Parks America does not undertake and specifically disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Lisa Brady, Chief Executive Officer of Parks America. Lisa?

Thanks, Joe, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you taking the time today to be on this call. Before I jump into operational performance for the quarter, I would like to give a quick overview of the company, as this is our first quarterly earnings call. Parks America is a regional owner and operator of three wild animal safari parks. We are a destination for family entertainment, offering some of the nation's best drive-through wild animal safari parks. Our park's signature attraction is a multiple-mile drive-through safari experience where guests have the opportunity to feed more than 500 animals, including hoofstocks such as zebras, water buffalo, elk, and numerous species of antelope and deer from around the world. Guests can experience the drive-through as part of a guided tour, rent one of our safari vans, or drive their own vehicle. All three parks have a walkabout adventure zoo where animals such as sloths, lemurs kangaroos and more are on display in a traditional zoo-like setting all three parks also have a retail gift shop and georgia and missouri have a restaurant as well our parks appeal to families and guests of all ages and are an affordable unique experience the three parks are located in pine mountain georgia which is about an hour south of atlanta in strafford missouri about 45 minutes north of branson and in College Station, Texas, located within approximately two hours of Houston, Austin, and Dallas. The company owns more than 900 acres of land. Now, let's review our operational performance. Our first quarter financial results reflected the typical seasonality of our business. It is historically the weakest quarter of our fiscal year. Park revenues for the quarter were down approximately one-half of 1%. Difficult weather conditions, particularly during key holiday and weekend periods at our Georgia park resulted in a 6.1% revenue decrease. Our Georgia park is our largest revenue generating property. However, we expect that the park will have more normalized customer traffic numbers as the weather improves in the coming quarter. We did experience stronger results at our Missouri and Texas parks where revenues increased 2.1% and 21.6% respectively. We are pleased to be gaining traction in Texas and believe our marketing efforts to build the brand are paying off. As a reminder, the Texas park was opened in 2019 and was purchased by Parks in 2020, so awareness still remains fairly low, which represents a huge opportunity for growth for the park. In Missouri, we were encouraged with the modest growth in 2024, particularly as it follows a strong first quarter in 2023, as we lapped the impact of our updated pricing strategy in order to remain competitive with our local competition. Overall, it is important to note that Q1 2024 revenues remained well above the 2019 pre-pandemic level. Results for the quarter were also impacted by the initiation of a proxy matter by a dissident group of shareholders that drove increased professional fees and expenses during the first quarter of 2024. Given the challenges we faced during the quarter, We are reasonably pleased with the financial and operating results. In 2024 and in the coming years, we will be investing to update our park assets and amenities, many of which had gone lacking in the past decade under previous leadership. We look to improve and update the physical plan of our properties, create new attractions on accessible land around our properties, and improve overall guest experiences. Working with the local management teams at our parks, we are transforming our workforce culture to focus on operational efficiencies, improving overall guest experience, and customer satisfaction. We are pleased with the progress that has been made to this point, and we expect our efforts to generate new and repeat customers while providing more consistent financial performance in the quarters and years to come. Turning to our capital allocation, our 2024 CAPEX plans include the following. At our Georgia Park, construction of a new main entry plaza and brand-new restroom facility, an all-new carnivore night house, a capybara feeding experience, and continued sidewalk fencing and shade replacements. At our Missouri Park, a rebuild of the park dock, which will allow guests more access to the waterfront, an all-new nature walkway around the pond, and a rebuild of the park dock and fish feeding experience. and continued improvement of our walkabout experience. At our Texas park, build out of our zookeeper facilities along with covered storage and other maintenance and safety projects. In terms of attracting new customers, we are transitioning our advertising and marketing strategy to a more proactive digital call to action campaign. We believe our parks represent outstanding educational entertainment and employment opportunities in the communities in which we are located. and we are heavily focused on developing community relationships with all of our stakeholders, which we believe will drive additional awareness, group business, and partnership opportunities. From a marketing perspective, we are running highly targeted digital campaigns, offering relevant seasonal promotions and products, and continuing to refine our organic social media efforts, all of which we believe will generate expanded awareness to generate new and repeat customer traffic. We are now offering annual memberships to create more affordable multiple visits for families throughout the year and are instituting dynamic pricing in certain peak periods of the year to enhance revenue generation. During the first quarter, we ran a six-week special on annual memberships from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day and generated a nearly nine-fold increase in new memberships during the quarter. Although starting from a low base, we are encouraged by this early traction. While there is still work to do to improve our operations, we remain dedicated to ensuring our guests have an amazing experience and leave the park wanting to come back again. Now let me turn the call over to Todd White, our Chief Financial Officer, for a review of the numbers.